The middle period of a drive is the most difficult part. You’re past the initial rush of contributions (thank you!). But it’s before you start approaching the finish line, at which point the pace starts picking up again. The middle period is where we are right now — but we’re now getting close to a big, big milestone, because over the last 53 hours, TPM readers have contributed just over $44,000. Which is friggin’ amazing! Now we’re coming up on the last big milestone ($400,000) before we hit our goal of $500,000. We think we can get there this weekend. We’re now just over $378,000. If you want to help nudge us toward the big four-zero-zero, just click right here.
Status Check
The Times-Siena poll has been among the least friendly to Democrats through this political cycle and the previous one as well. It’s always important to remember: that doesn’t mean it’s “wrong” or “biased.” In every election you have a range of pollsters making slightly different assumptions about the electorate. You only know which assumptions are right, or most predictive, when you get the election results. Today Times-Siena released a new poll showing Harris up 50-46 over Donald Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Same result in each.
Continue reading “Status Check”What’s Next?
I want to urge you not to let the week come to an end without making your contribution to the TPM Journalism Fund.
We come to you in a bit of a different posture this year. Compared to past years, TPM isn’t just stable financially but in a stronger position than perhaps we’ve ever been. It’s a product of a prudent business strategy applied consistently over time. No tricks, no magic, no secret sauce, except the longstanding relationship we have with you that has given us the luxury of time. Time to retool, rejigger, experiment, fail, and try again. The community you have helped us to build is the source of our hardiness in what remains an extremely difficult environment for many news publishers.
So why give to TPM now if things are going well? The answer comes down to the enormous difference between running a news business while constantly having to bail water out of the bottom of the boat versus being able to focus on navigating toward an ambitious destination while avoiding bad weather and treacherous shoals.
We don’t know what the next four months hold, let alone the next four years. But we do know that if your support lags now we’ll be left vulnerable in the rough weather and high seas we’ll inevitably encounter. But if you continue to give us the support you have in recent years, we can use that to build out a sturdier craft, which in turn lets us be more ambitious about where we sail it.
Whether it’s confronting the grim reality of a Trump II presidency or working to shore up the foundational elements of democracy and protect them from future threats like Trump, there is a lot of work to be done. We want to do that work at a high enough level that the impacts in the world are real and tangible and extend beyond the confines of the TPM community.
Asking for your support is a humbling thing to do. We don’t take your support for granted. In fact, we marvel at it. We are constantly evaluating and reevaluating how to earn and sustain that support not just because there are no guarantees but because you deserve our best effort. That, too, is foundational to this community.
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You Won’t Find Vintage Trump Nostalgia Here
Hello it’s the weekend, this is The Weekender ☕️
As the team and I were covering Donald Trump’s quest for attention disguised as a press conference at Mar-a-Lago this week, I had a moment of déjà vu. Here I was sitting at the same desk I sat at four years ago when we first began working remote during COVID, listening to the same dude with the same brain worms talk about the same stuff: his crowd sizes, how he could put Hillary Clinton in jail, how he’s not going to cut Social Security, how he has a new idea for a policy that would, in fact, do just that.
Continue reading “You Won’t Find Vintage Trump Nostalgia Here”Kamala Dog Walked Trump Right Back Into the Debate
One thing that gets a bit lost in all the helter-skelter of the last few days: Trump caved big time. Harris said he needed to show up on September 10th. And after three weeks of threats and whining he agreed.
Continue reading “Kamala Dog Walked Trump Right Back Into the Debate”An Insider’s View of the Love Affair Between Hungary and the American Right
The American right’s love affair with Hungary seemingly knows no bounds. Hungarian officials appear at GOP events; CPAC has a Budapest event. Hungarian President Viktor Orbán met with Donald Trump last month, and earned a dilatory shoutout from the Republican candidate at the RNC, where Trump called Hungary a “strong country, run by very powerful, tough leaders — a tough guy.”
Continue reading “An Insider’s View of the Love Affair Between Hungary and the American Right”Jack Smith Wants More Time To Figure Out SCOTUS Immunity Ruling
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Hurry Up And Wait
Today was the deadline set by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan for Special Counsel Jack Smith and Donald Trump to propose a schedule for pretrial matters as she resumes the Jan. 6 case following the Supreme Court’s horrendous ruling on presidential immunity.
But Smith, in a bit of a surprise move, asked Chutkan in a filing late yesterday to provide more time for him and other DOJ components to sort out the implications of the Supreme Court decision. Trump, the king of delay, did not oppose Smith’s request for more time.
Smith wants another three weeks – until Aug. 30 – to confer with Trump and submit the proposed scheduling order. Smith also asked Chutkan to delay the status conference originally scheduled for next Friday, Aug. 16, until after Aug. 30.
Typically, you would expect the judge to be amenable to this kind of request, but Chutkan was clearly ready to move when the case was finally returned to her, so it’ll be interesting to see how she reacts. I still doubt she’ll force the issue, but nothing about this case is routine.
What does it all mean?
This case was already not going to trial before the election, so it doesn’t change those odds. It reduces the window available for holding any kind of evidentiary hearing on the immunity issue, making it less likely that that will happen before the election (for what it’s worth, I was having trouble getting excited about that as any kind of real pre-election accountability moment for Trump anyway). Whether the case goes to trial after November depends almost entirely on whether Trump loses the election, so Smith’s desired delay wouldn’t really change that either.
Beyond that, we’re left to speculate about what Smith is grappling with internally. It’s all speculation at this point. But before I get into the more tenuous speculation, the simplest and most obvious answer is that the implications of the Supreme Court immunity decision are in fact difficult to parse and to apply to the facts of this case. The high court didn’t give a clear road map on all of the legal issues involved, as Politico explains extensively this morning. And there are a lot of legal issues involved, as this Just Security project published this week outlines in great detail.
Beyond that, the speculation about the delay ranges from internal disputes at DOJ about how to move forward to more mundane bureaucratic slowness in dotting i’s and crossing t’s to one possibility that I’ve tried to keep in mind all along … but again this is purely speculative: If you’re not going to get to try Trump before the election, does it make sense to change the strategy of a stripped-down indictment of only Trump and broaden the federal case to charge the full conspiracy, including all possible crimes committed by Trump, plus adding co-defendants and co-conspirators?
I mention this possibility because the whole point of the current approach was to keep things narrow and targeted, largely for judicial economy and speed. It didn’t work. Trump succeeded in dragging it out past the election. Given that the goal of the original strategy is no longer achievable, there’s a logic to changing the strategy. And remember: if Trump loses the election, Smith has all the time in the world.
What Can Be Done About The Georgia Election Board?
NBC News’ Lisa Rubin takes a closer look at the recent shenanigans of the MAGA-infused Georgia Election Board on behalf of Donald Trump.
That Crazy Trump Presser
Casual readers of other news outlets probably got the sense that Trump held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago yesterday where he proposed more presidential debates, dodged some abortion questions, and made preposterous claims about the size of his crowds. But it truly was the kind of performance that had it been anyone else, or even him eight years ago, would have produced a cacophony of stories asking what is wrong with this guy. If you missed it, perusing the TPM liveblog of the presser might be the best way to get a proper sense of how much we’ve collectively normalized the man.
Harris Campaign Unleashes Its Young And Very Online Staff
I’ve read a million campaign press releases over the years and at this point ignore most of them, so I’m not holding up this Harris campaign press release responding to Trump’s press conference yesterday as some kind of Rosetta stone of the current moment. And yet … if you want to see the difference in tone and tenor between the Biden and Harris campaigns, this is as good of an illustration as any:
Nancy Pelosi Is Having A Moment
The former speaker is on a roll since President Biden ended his re-election bid.
Here she is, telling the AP about her crusade against Trump: “‘How can I say this in the nicest possible way: My goal in life was that man would never step in the White House again,’ Pelosi said, slapping the table with every word.”
Here she is giving The New Yorker’s David Remnick her assessment of Biden’s campaign: “I’ve never been that impressed with his political operation. They won the White House. Bravo. But my concern was: this ain’t happening, and we have to make a decision for this to happen. The President has to make the decision for that to happen.”
Historical Context
Just gonna leave this right here:
Good Read
TPM’s Josh Kovensky: A Journey Through the Authoritarian New Right – A non-exhaustive look at the influencers behind Republicans’ recent turn toward the bizarre.
Reader Mailbag
TPM Reader AN checking in this week from the Paris Olympics:
Thanks for including that item about Armand Duplantis in the Morning Memo. My husband and I were there last night at the Stade de France, and it was absolute magic.
We are the biggest nerds in the world, totally un-sporty, never watch any sports, barely know what pole-vaulting is. Some friends gave us their extra tickets to Saturday night’s, and then last night’s, track and field event, so we thought, what the hell, it’s the Olympics, let’s go.
Well. We had a spectacularly good time watching all the events on both evenings: discus, shotput, long jump, high jump, sprints, relays and the men’s 10,000 meter final. But the pole-vault! It was just spectacularly entertaining, in large part thanks to the showmanship of the athletes, especially Sam Kendricks and Mondo himself. They had the crowd clapping in unison, they mugged for the camera, raced around, emoted, hugged each other between attempts.
It was crazy how much higher Mondo vaulted than the other guys–at the beginning, he was clearing the bar by probably half a meter. He seemed to be floating. When he had beat everyone else and won the gold at 6.10 meters, there was a pause. Then came the announcement that Mondo would go for the world record. The crowd went crazy and stayed that way until the very end. What a joy.
I’m not sure this experience has turned us into sports fans, but after this, we certainly get what all the fuss is about.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
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Trump Shows Us What Election Denialism 2.0 Will Look Like
As he refused to answer questions about whether he’ll accept the results of the 2024 election and avoided acknowledging where he stands on that thorny issue of a peaceful transfer of power, Donald Trump on Thursday painted a rather stark portrait of how exactly he might try to undermine the results of the election if he loses.
Continue reading “Trump Shows Us What Election Denialism 2.0 Will Look Like”Desperate For Attention, Trump Holds A Press Conference
Former President Donald Trump spent most of his hour-plus press conference from his Mar-a-Lago compound on Thursday not hearing questions, doubling down on racist attacks about Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ biracial identity, bragging about his crowd sizes, not committing to accepting election results, claiming no one died on Jan. 6 and not remembering Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s name.
This was Trump’s first public appearance since Harris officially became the presidential nominee and selected Walz as her running mate. Trump spent a good deal of his time in front of the cameras claiming Harris is scared of answering questions and doing interviews — unlike the man ticking off grievances who stood before them.
It was a Trumpian attempt to shift the news cycle back to his campaign amid the positive media coverage the Harris-Walz campaign has been getting — most notably breaking through in the form of memes on almost every mainstream social media platform.
Catch up on our live coverage below:
Listen To This: Balls To The Walz
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss VP Kamala Harris’ veep pick and the first few weeks of her campaign.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.